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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28431795">inheritance</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/iimpavid/pseuds/iimpavid'>iimpavid</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fantasy, Gen, Mermaids</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 20:02:33</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,596</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28431795</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/iimpavid/pseuds/iimpavid</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Jocelyn took damn near everything in the divorce: the house, the car, their friends, their daughter. </p>
<p>Leonard, well, he got his great aunt’s condemned Victorian on the Washington coast and his boat. Jocelyn had a helluva seasickness problem otherwise she’d’ve probably taken that too.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>inheritance</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I haven't posted Star Trek fic in years. I have explanation for myself. Presented to you all here as I found it among my myriad drafts: incomplete and unbeta'd.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Jocelyn took damn near everything in the divorce: the house, the car, their friends, their </span>
  <em>
    <span>daughter</span>
  </em>
  <span>. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Leonard, well, he got his great aunt’s condemned Victorian on the Washington coast and his boat. Jocelyn had a helluva seasickness problem otherwise she’d’ve probably taken </span>
  <em>
    <span>that</span>
  </em>
  <span> too. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>If he’d become a surgeon like his father he might have been able to afford a better divorce lawyer or maybe had the sense to have Jocelyn sign a prenup. But he didn’t become a surgeon and he didn’t do any of that smart shit people from old money are meant to do when they get hitched. So Leonard did what any other respectable Southern gentleman might do in a similar situation: he ran away. Fled right across the country under the pretense of taking a sabbatical researching the acidification of the Pacific. Really, he’s going to spend the next year drying out and renovating the wreck he’d inherited and denying his current reality.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That’s the plan, anyway.</span>
</p><hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The nice thing about living more or less next door to a national forest is nobody begrudges his being a recluse and doing strange shit at odd hours like rebuilding the back porch of the house or hiking along the beach barefoot. He’s spent enough of his life going around shoeless and picking goatheads out of his soles back home that he’s more or less immune to the detritus of the forested shores. The rain had let up and he figured this was the best time he’d get to actually enjoy one of the single joys to be had living near the beach in the middle of nowhere. Even if it was 10 at night.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Leonard wandered without seeing where he was walking. Something about the ocean thundering alongside him gave perspective to a whole lot of things. The finite reality of his father’s death. Everyone had to die eventually-- and rot and sublimate back into the earth. That wasn’t the worst thought to have here next to the biggest and least-caring force outside of gravity. The smallness of his grief and that, frankly, channeling it into every bottle of Old No. 7 to be found was monumentally stupid. There’s no comfort in that but Leonard’s had more than enough coddling to last a lifetime. The simple fact of his marriage falling apart and his doing his best to help speed that collapse along on its way--</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The night was suddenly full of screaming. If the approximate sounds of an enraged whale being piped through a distortion filter can approximate screaming. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s not a human sound.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So much for a moonlit walk on the beach to clear his head.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He jogs up the beach, rounds boulders until he comes upon the origin of the fury. A writhing pile of fishing nets and wire lines. Down nearer the shore what looks to be a harpoon, of all things. The pile glows. Patterns that note danger to something animal in him. The tail trails yards-long, powerful corded muscle diminishing into delicate fins, crushed out of water, torn. He sees a hand first, luminous in the moonlight, then catches sight of the woman’s head-- or not a woman. Certainly not a human but nothing like a Disney mermaid. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Quit hollerin’!” Irritation is the easiest thing to grab hold of. He seizes it with both hands. Steps toward her-- the mermaid hisses, jaw opening wider than the proportions of her head should allow, showing three rows of angled teeth. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Shit-- alright. Alright.” He steps back, digs in his pocket for a knife. He holds it up to her, unfolded and shining in the moonlight. “You’ve used knives before, right?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>At that moment he’s absolutely sure she’d’ve gutted him if she could have reached. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey, I had to ask.” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She caught it one-handed and immediately set to slicing her way out of the netting. It was no easy task-- industrial nets were made to withstand great force-- but there was no weakness in a creature like this. The ocean, for all its majesty, is a cruel place to grow.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Her dorsal fins flexed. They had torn halfway up her back and were knotted in the nets. “Here, I can help with that--”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s his own fault she spits acid at him and damned blind luck that he doesn’t end up blinded. The mermaid doesn’t stick around to watch his pained screaming and frantic 9-1-1 call. He can’t blame her. A marine biologist in agony trying to make up a story about a jellyfish species native to waters thousands of miles away to hide the fact that he just saw a mermaid? Not the best entertainment for the evening.</span>
</p><hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He regains use of his arm before the feeling comes back to the whole of it. He does dissections, cuts vegetables, takes notes with a constant eye on his left hand. There’s no point in losing his ambidextrousness just because of some numbness; he’s just got to be extra careful not to cut any fingers off. It’s a damn good thing, he supposes, that he never became a surgeon.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He tells the story about the box jelly he tripped onto often enough he manages to believe it. People in pain hallucinate, after all. Of course, jellyfish stings heal and don’t tend to scar quite like the viscous spatters wrapping his forearm and hand but denial is a hell of a drug.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Leonard heals, gets back to work on the house, halfheartedly continues collecting bivalves for research in a world where mermaids don’t exist. Especially not bioluminescent, acid-spitting mermaids.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He’s no Samah diver but he’s got a knack for skin diving, even without the enlarged spleen to keep him properly oxygenated. It could be scientific observation but in truth, it’s the most peace he knows how to find. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>There’s no limit to the craggy shallows that need exploring. There are a few caves that he’s not stupid enough to explore unequipped and alone but-- their presence is tempting. If it weren’t the end of summer with the bitter chill oncoming he might consider it. The world shifted with the currents, inevitable but almost gentle as long as the weather was fair. With a solid layer of neoprene between his skin and the water it almost seemed warm and under the sounds of the current, nearer the sprawling ocean floor, he could hear something that resonated deeper than audible sound.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It was too late in the year and too close to shore for whales but he gave in to the daydream for just a moment. He would have to visit Puget Sound-- next week or next month-- see if he couldn’t weasel his way into work there. Nothing like a move across the country to settle your head back on your shoulders.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Of course, when he emerges from the water real life slaps him across the face immediately. Or maybe it isn’t real life because there’s no rational explanation for the deep gouges along the starboard side of his boat as if something three times heavier than himself had clawed its way onboard. There’s no explanation for his lost knife being left smack dab in the center of the deck. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Leonard casts a useless look toward the shore, then to the horizon, wondering.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The only response is to dive again and deeper. Toward the rougher, rockier waters.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She pops out of the seaweed at the cave’s entrance, resolving suddenly like one of those trick paintings of birch trees full of paint horses, and begins to glow. Leonard’s shock makes itself known in a burst of air from his lungs. Humans aren’t so far from fish after all. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He stares at the mermaid, because this has to be a mermaid, then the burning in his chest reminds him: he needs oxygen to live. He signs, frantically, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Please. Wait here,</span>
  </em>
  <span> and kicks for the surface to gasp freely again. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She follows but only lets her eyes above the water. All four of them watch him with unknowable intent, black pupil and cornea ringed with just the thinnest band of luminous green. Her scalp glitters gold in the sunlight.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Holy-- what-- you <em>can’t</em> be from around here.” It’s the most sensible thing he can come up with. She’s bioluminescent, sure, and capable of camouflage but too small and colorful to belong to the cold waters of the Northwest.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Quick as a flash, she’s gone beneath the water. He feels her pass-- from head to tail fins she must be twelve feet long-- and she hauls herself aboard the boat, webbed fingers fitting neatly into the already-scored side.</span>
</p><hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The door rattling like it's about to blow off its hinges wakes him. Then the banging. Not just at the door but the front of the house and at least once the sound of a flat palm hitting glass.  It’s a damn shame he never picked up a bat or a gun-- </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“For everloving Christ’s sake, </span>
  <em>
    <span>hang on a minute</span>
  </em>
  <span>!” </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Miraculously, the person on the other side of the front door stops. Leonard wrenches it open, “Now just what in the hell do you think you’re doing makin’ a racket fit to wake the whole neighborhood before the goddamn sun--” Then he sees </span>
  <em>
    <span>just who it was</span>
  </em>
  <span> who felt the need to break down his door at dawn.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She looks no less annoyed than he is as she accuses, “You offered aid.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Get inside right now before somebody sees you standing out here bare-assed as the day you were born.” It’s the only reaction one can have to a mermaid having sprouted legs and turned up on his doorstep.</span>
</p>
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